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“…Books are bright because they provide lights to our dim vision, and because they clearly project a lantern light that might help us discern our way in the world, or make difficult choices when it’s hard for us to see the right ones. But they’re bright too because of their incandescent energy of thinking and creating, the blaze of consciousness that has been inscribed upon those pages.”[34]
Mark Doty, The Art Of Description, p. 34.

“A book is a dream that you hold in your hands.”
– Neil Gaiman

It sure seems summers has been flying by at warp speed doesn’t? Hope everyone is enjoying summer for what it’s worth.

Been extremely busy lately myself and it seems some personal circumstances continue non-stop irrespective of how much focus is placed on them. It matters now, though! We are here for books, and books are here for us. What follows are some of the books purchased in the latest June Book haul. Enjoy.

This phenomenal book that contains Henry David Thoreau’s A Week On The Concord & Merrimack Rivers, Walden, The Main Woods and Cape Cod, is arguably one of my favorite books this year, not only for content, which we could all learn from, but for the quality of the book. Look forward on getting more of the Library Of America book series as they are very high quality hardcover books with great information.

Had never read this book (I know, blasphemy!) now I have. It has become one of my all time favorites books (dystopian or otherwise), especially given how society is currently mimicking many of the disturbing elements noted in the book.

The Fountainhead was a phenomenal book by Rand that I thoroughly enjoyed, and I do not expect any less from this book. How her books function at multiple levels of intellectual thought blows away most fiction that’s out there by a wide margin. For individuals wishing to read about issues that matter that are woven within fiction (or even nonfiction), Rand set the bar high.

This book aims to wake individuals to the perils of collectivism, brought about with wide-ranging examples that even include samplings from George Orwell’s 1984. It is a very underrated book rarely if ever talked about, even in alternative research circles.

Although Walden is included in the Library Of America edition of the Thoreau book above, unfortunately Civil Disobedience was not. That’s okay since this book cost slightly over $3 and it’s practically priceless in insights. I love what the book has to offer as well as how sturdy it’s made.

This book is a very timely book which surveys the increase of censorship and propaganda against individuals as it sifts through different essays published over the last two decades or so. Defending Freed Speech is a veritable must-read for any individual who values freedom and is concerned about the searing censorship that continues that is rising and continues unabated.

This book is a compendium of the wondrous works of James Allen. If you’re looking for something inspirational and motivational along the line of the works of Napoleon Hill but more philosophical that focuses on mindset, Mind Is Master might just be for you. In As A Man Thinketh, not only were Allen’s word just like reading poetry and learning about life, but it felt like being in the presence of someone whose wise beyond their years and is a person of extreme quality and virtue.

Always wanted to read some of Crais’ work, and now I have a chance. A friend suggested I started with this particular volume, which is why I opted to start here rather than the first book of the series.

Got this book as a gift, and appreciate it very much. Appreciating the depth and scope in The Fountainhead, and knowing how methodical Rand is with her writing, I am looking forward to this very much. Much shorter than The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged too!

This book was found in a garage sale – it was like finding a black pearl in a swamp! Yeah, its fiction, but so what. Everyone needs to pump the breaks and revamp their engine now and then. Why not do it with an entertaining thriller?

Scheff’s book is recommended by Jon Rappoport (NoMoreFakeNews.com) in his Power Outside The Matrix tutorial.

I am about a third of the way through, and am finding much substance in the book. With an unorthodox approach Scheff deconstructs the mainstream narrative in many different ‘official’ stories (9/11, JFK Assassination and so on) and shows there’s much more than the predictable one-dimensional point of view that the mainstream media nigh always brings to each narrative. How Scheff brings about his analysis with much brio via his prose is also just as refreshing. A very underrated book to say the least.

This book not only recounts part of the life of Orwell & Churchill, but also essentially juxtaposes some of the core qualities. A very intriguing read, although a bit dry/slow at times. Here’s a review of this piece.

These are the opening salvos to Asimov’s intricate and timeless Foundation Trilogy. Given that these books were brought about after the original Foundation Trilogy was written, they do an apt job of further enlargening Asimov’s fictional world. The whole series is a must-read for any hard science fiction fan, especially if you are a fan of the classics.

Your Body’s Many Cries For Water is a fantastic book that takes a very outside-of-the-box view at health in relationship with water. If you want to know how much harm and disease can manifest your body by merely not drinking enough water, read this. In fact, this book should be essential reading for everyone given how most people go about dehydrated on a daily basis (myself included).Beren & Luthien by J.R.R. Tolkien

This is a rather unique book that covers nigh all the aspects of Beren and Luthien, which was collated and brought about by Christopher Tolkien, son of J.R.R. Tolkien. Please keep in mind however, that If you are intimately familiar with the story by having read previous books that cover aspects of it, this might not be the book for you as most [if not all] of the information might be a rehash. A must-have for die-hard Tolkien fans however, especially because it finally collates all the data pertaining to Beren and Luthien in one book, rather than it being scattered through various sources.

In Battlefield America, Constitutional Attorney and President of The Rutherford Institute, John W. Whitehead not only shows overwhelming evidence for the rise of the Police State in the American landscape, but incisively speaks his mind about where America is heading as a nation if the tidal wave of totalitarianism doesn’t cease. The most sobering book I’ve read all year by far.

For what it’s worth, the books this month were collated from AbeBooks, HalfPriceBooks, the Library, Amazon, Barnes&Nobles and Garage Sales, while some were gifts as well. I am fortunate to have found some glaring gems for nigh nothing, and am appreciative of the suggestions made by some of you in the department of research.

There’s still much to be done, so that’s all for now. Did any of you manage to snap up any books in the month of June, or otherwise? By all means, share your stories below!

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If you find value in this information, please share it. This article is free and open source. All individuals have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Zy Marquiez and TheBreakaway.wordpress.com.
___________________________________________________________About The Author:

Zy Marquiez is an avid book reviewer, inquirer, an open-minded skeptic, yogi, and freelance writer who aims at empowering individuals while also studying and regularly mirroring subjects like Consciousness, Education, Creativity, The Individual, Ancient History & Ancient Civilizations, Forbidden Archaeology, Big Pharma, Alternative Health, Space, Geoengineering, Social Engineering, Propaganda, and much more.

His other blog, BreakawayConsciousnessBlog.wordpress.com features mainly his personal work, while TheBreakaway.wordpress.com serves as a media portal which mirrors vital information nigh always ignored by mainstream press, but still highly crucial to our individual understanding of various facets of the world.

“Political language…is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”
– George Orwell

In Churchill And Orwell, Thomas E. Ricks does an apt job of juxtaposing two of history’s pillars of freedom – Winston Churchill and George Orwell, whose real name is Eric Arthur Blair.

The author follows the lives of these men through the 30s and 40s with lucidity, while comparing and contrasting key elements of these stalwarts of critical thought and independence.

Though both men were incisive writers that did not overlook the power of the written word, each man went through his own trials and tribulations that helped mold who they became. Those life lessons they learned helped each become staunch supporters of freedom and individuality in a world that sought then, as it still seeks now at times, to conform individuals at nigh every turn.

With a critical eye to the unique path these men have walked, the author sagely states that their path:

“… is a path we should all strive for if we are to preserve the right to think, speak, and act independently, heeding the dictates not of the state or of fashionable thought but of our own consciences. In most places and most of the time, liberty is not a product of military action. Rather, it is something alive that grows or diminishes every day, in how we think and communicate, how we treat each other in our public discourse, in what we value and reward as a society, and how we do that.”[1]

Such a compelling statement beckons rumination for those that value freedom. Freedom isn’t something that’s merely handed down, but an idea that’s alive, fluid, wholly able to grow or whither depending on how it is treated.

As such, given the totalitarian train of tyranny and fascism that is barreling down the pike, it would be wise to reap wisdom from these prescient pillars of the past, whilst also contemplating what Freedom truly means to us.

If the past is any indication of the future, and we certainly know that it is, then given the cyclic nature of history and man’s inability to learn from the past, then it is only a matter of time before we are waist deep in the very totalitarian and tyrannical issues that both Churchill and Orwell fought to prevent.

This makes learning our history and from those that stood before us and fought the good fight an imperative. If not, humanity is merely choosing the path of ignorance once again.

Churchill & Orwell: The Fight For Freedom is an evocative read, made all the more relevant by the rise in tyranny and censorship that seeps further into society. The courage Churchill and Orwell brought to bear in the fight for freedom was immeasurable, just as their wisdom is timeless. To ignore their words and actions would be unwise, and if we do that, we do that at or own peril.

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Sources:

[1] Thomas E. Ricks, Churchill & Orwell, pg. 269.
___________________________________________________________
If you find value in this information, please share it. This article is free and open source. All individuals have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Zy Marquiez and TheBreakaway.wordpress.com.
___________________________________________________________About The Author:

Zy Marquiez is an avid book reviewer, inquirer, an open-minded skeptic, yogi, and freelance writer who aims at empowering individuals while also studying and regularly mirroring subjects like Consciousness, Education, Creativity, The Individual, Ancient History & Ancient Civilizations, Forbidden Archaeology, Big Pharma, Alternative Health, Space, Geoengineering, Social Engineering, Propaganda, and much more.

His other blog, BreakawayConsciousnessBlog.wordpress.com features mainly his personal work, while TheBreakaway.wordpress.com serves as a media portal which mirrors vital information nigh always ignored by mainstream press, but still highly crucial to our individual understanding of various facets of the world.

Orwell’s landmark piece, 1984, has resonated with millions of readers, and with good reason: it speaks to the pervasive encroaching totalitarianism that seeks to strangle the individual that has historically taken place throughout history.

In the same light, what follows are some of Orwell’s wise words collated to incite some rumination between incisive and inquiring individuals.

“If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”

“During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.”

“The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns, as it were, to instinctively using to long words and exhausted idioms, like cuttlefish squirting out link.”

“…to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy…” [This statement influenced readers to see that lying government leaders were pretending to a moral sense they did not possess.][Subsequent commentary Jon Rappoport of NoMoreFakeNews.com]

“But actually, he thought as he re-adjusted the Ministry of Plenty’s figures, it was not even forgery. It was merely the substitution of one piece of nonsense for another. Most of the material that you were dealing with had no connexion with anything in the real world, not even the kind of connexion that is contained in a direct lie. Statistics were just as much a fantasy in their original version as in their rectified version.” [Generations of readers realized that the government was simply inventing itself as it wanted the public to see it. Government was a hoax. And if government was a hoax, and you wanted to reveal that, you would have to find a way into secret communications. Thus, Orwell spawned untold numbers of independent spies who began looking into the private communications of political power players.] [Subsequent commentary Jon Rappoport]

“Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?” Jon Rappoport
[This statement alerted readers that news networks were omitting a whole range of ideas about the true actions of government—and therefore, again, independent citizens would have to dig into the personal communications of leaders, in order to discover what they were actually thinking and talking about.] [Subsequent commentary Jon Rappoport]

“…perhaps the Party was rotten under the surface…” [Readers, generations of readers took to that phrase. If the Party was rotten, then you had to go under the surface to find that out. You had to scrape into the private corruption behind the public face.] [Subsequent commentary Jon Rappoport]

“The two aims of the Party are to conquer the whole surface of the earth and to extinguish once and for all the possibility of independent thought… All rulers in all ages have tried to impose a false view of the world upon their followers.” [The effect of this inflammatory statement is obvious. Rebels, generations of rebels have probed the inner workings of the government, in order to expose what the government is actually doing, in order to prevent a complete takeover.] [Subsequent commentary Jon Rappoport]

“Heavy physical work, the care of home and children, petty quarrels with neighbors, films, football, beer, and above all, gambling filled up the horizon of their minds. To keep them in control was not difficult…. All that was required of them was a primitive patriotism which could be appealed to whenever it was necessary to make them accept longer working hours or shorter rations. And when they become discontented, as they sometimes did, their discontentment led nowhere, because being without general ideas, they could only focus it on petty specific grievances.”
– George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four

“Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.”

“He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.”

“In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”

“War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.”

“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”

“Every generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.”

“The best books… are those that tell you what you know already.”

“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.”

“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”

“The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.”

“If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.”

“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever.”

“Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. ”

“We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness.”

“But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”

“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”

“Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.”

“Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout with some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.”

“The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection.”

“Perhaps a lunatic was simply a minority of one.”

“Until they became conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.”

“If you loved someone, you loved him, and when you had nothing else to give, you still gave him love.”

“Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me.”

“In the face of pain there are no heroes.”

“Big Brother is Watching You.”

“Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.”

“It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words.”

“Being in a minority, even in a minority of one, did not make you mad. There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.”

“People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.”

“The choice for mankind lies between freedom and happiness and for the great bulk of mankind, happiness is better.”

“Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.”

“On the whole human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.”

“I enjoy talking to you. Your mind appeals to me. It resembles my own mind except that you happen to be insane.”

“Orthodoxy means not thinking–not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.”

“Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the animals. He sets them to work, he gives back to them the bare minimum that will prevent them from starving, and the rest he keeps for himself.”

“Four legs good, two legs bad.”

“It could not have been ten seconds, and yet it seemed a long time that their hands were clasped together. He had time to learn every detail on her hand.”

“For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable – what then?”

“Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations.”

“We do not merely destroy our enemies; we change them.”

“A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1. What am I trying to say? 2. What words will express it? 3. What image or idiom will make it clearer? 4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?”

“Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else.”

“You are a slow learner, Winston.”
“How can I help it? How can I help but see what is in front of my eyes? Two and two are four.”

“Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane.”

“Men can only be happy when they do not assume that the object of life is happiness.”

“Confession is not betrayal. What you say or do doesn’t matter; only feelings matter. If they could make me stop loving you-that would be the real betrayal.”

“Sanity is not statistical.”

“Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimetres inside your skull. ”

“The only good human being is a dead one.”

“All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.”

“The object of terrorism is terrorism. The object of oppression is oppression. The object of torture is torture. The object of murder is murder. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?”

“Of pain you could wish only one thing: that it should stop. Nothing in the world was so bad as physical pain. In the face of pain there are no heroes.”

“At 50, everyone has the face he deserves.”

“To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.”

“To die hating them, that was freedom.”

“No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?”

“He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it.”

“One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.”

“There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.”

“Your worst enemy, he reflected, was your nervous system. At any moment the tension inside you was liable to translate itself into some visible symptom.”

“There are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them.”

“Winston Smith: Does Big Brother exist?
O’Brien: Of course he exists.
Winston Smith: Does he exist like you or me?
O’Brien: You do not exist.”

“Several of them would have protested if they could have found the right arguments.”

“We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.”

“Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.”

“The further a society drifts from truth the more it will hate those who speak it.”

“This work was strictly voluntary, but any animal who absented himself from it would have his rations reduced by half.”

“What can you do, thought Winston, against the lunatic who is more intelligent than yourself, who gives your arguments a fair hearing and then simply persists in his lunacy?”

“We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right.”

“If people cannot write well, they cannot think well, and if they cannot think well, others will do their thinking for them.”

“If you kept the small rules, you could break the big ones.”

“So long as they (the Proles) continued to work and breed, their other activities were without importance. Left to themselves, like cattle turned loose upon the plains of Argentina, they had reverted to a style of life that appeared to be natural to them, a sort of ancestral pattern…Heavy physical work, the care of home and children, petty quarrels with neighbors, films, football, beer and above all, gambling filled up the horizon of their minds. To keep them in control was not difficult.”

“Under the spreading chestnut tree I sold you and you sold me:
There lie they, and here lie we
Under the spreading chestnut tree.”

“If you can feel that staying human is worth while, even when it can’t have any result whatever, you’ve beaten them.”

“Pacifism is objectively pro-fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side, you automatically help out that of the other. Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such a war as the present one. In practice, ‘he that is not with me is against me’.”

“Let’s face it: our lives are miserable, laborious, and short.”

“In philosophy, or religion, or ethics, or politics, two and two might make five, but when one was designing a gun or an aeroplane they had to make four.”

“We are the dead. Our only true life is in the future.”

“All writers are vain, selfish and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives lies a mystery. Writing a book is a long, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.”

“It is a feeling of relief, almost of pleasure, at knowing yourself at last genuinely down and out. You have talked so often of going to the dogs – and well, here are the dogs, and you have reached them, and you can stand it. It takes off a lot of anxiety.”

“If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable – what then?”

“The masses never revolt of their own accord, and they never revolt merely because they are oppressed. Indeed, so long as they are not permitted to have standards of comparison, they never even become aware that they are oppressed.”

“You’re only a rebel from the waist downwards,’ he told her.”

“The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation. These contradictions are not accidental , nor do they result from from ordinary hypocrisy: they are deliberate exercises in doublethink”

“The consequences of every act are included in the act itself.”

“Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”

“Man is the only creature that consumes without producing”

“Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.”

“April the 4th, 1984. To the past, or to the future. To an age when thought is free. From the Age of Big Brother, from the Age of the Thought Police, from a dead man – greetings!”

“Man serves the interests of no creature except himself.”

___________________________________________________________
This article is free and open source. All individuals are encouraged to share this content and have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Zy Marquiez and TheBreakaway.wordpress.com.
___________________________________________________________About The Author:

His other blog, BreakawayConsciousnessBlog.wordpress.com features mainly his personal work, while TheBreakaway.wordpress.com serves as a media portal which mirrors vital information nigh always ignored by mainstream press, but still highly crucial to our individual understanding of various facets of the world.

Trump’s attack on the CIA came into focus after the CIA claimed Putin subverted the election on behalf of Trump.

The Trump team retorted: Ridiculous; reminds us of the CIA’s phony assessment of Saddam’s WMDs that led to the disastrous war against Iraq.

Then the CIA’s gloves came off.

But there is more to it than that.

All along, Trump has been hammering the mainstream press, calling them biased, idiots, fake, etc. Certainly through his advisor, Steve Bannon, and quite probably through other sources, Trump knows about the CIA-major media connection. This connection, of course, goes way back to the Mockingbird CIA operation of the early 1950s. Major news outlets have been infested with CIA operatives since that time.

When Trump goes after mainstream news, he’s also going after its shadow brother, the CIA; and vice versa. This is no accident. You can’t put a heavy dent in one without putting a heavy dent in the other.

As the mainstream press continues to stir the pot and attack Trump on every possible front, day after day, they strive to impart the impression that the escalating war between Trump and the CIA is a sign that the president’s administration is in a condition of severe imbalance, heading toward the edge of the cliff.

Two points about that: the press is trying to protect its shadow brother, the CIA; and the reason a war between a president and the CIA hasn’t broken out since JFK and the Bay of Pigs is, simply, no president has dared to challenge the CIA openly.

Or to put it another way, every president since Kennedy SHOULD have gone to war with the CIA, but no president did.

Trump, so far, is carrying out his version of a war.

He may stop, he may make peace, he may turn away, he may decide the consequences are too steep, but so far he’s doing, in this respect, what he should be doing, because the CIA has believed, for a long, long time that it is the president, it runs the country, it decides the important issues, it fronts for mega-corporate incursions into foreign nations, it decides foreign policy, it calculates when a regime should be overthrown, it decides how to foment wars that will end up funneling huge chunks of cash to the military-industrial complex…

People with attention spans of less than six seconds think rooting out corruption in high places can be done with the stroke of a pen and an executive order. No. Afraid not.

Digging out, exposing, and getting rid of the rot and corruption inside the CIA is on the order of turning around an oil tanker in a small lake.

That rot and crime wasn’t built to its present level overnight. It has been built since 1948.

The people who constructed it (with Allen Dulles right up there at the head of the line) assumed they could stage a coup. A national coup. They could essentially take over the country. And to a large extent, they did. JFK’s assassination removed a potential obstruction early in the game.

Then, nothing. Until Trump.

Maybe he’ll throw up his hands and forget about going after the CIA. Maybe he’ll focus on other parts of his agenda. Maybe he’ll prove to be completely ineffective and unwilling, as regards the Agency. But he has sounded an alarm, just as he sounded an alarm about Globalism, the so-called “free trade” treaties, and the brutal theft of jobs in America by those Rockefeller forces who want to torpedo economies, as a step toward exercising greater international control over the lives of billions of people.

The CIA and major media in this country are in lock-step. They feed each other. They produce a picture of reality that is entirely shallow and false. They want compliance, obedience, and silence. They want to make black white and white black. They want to fulfill Orwell’s 1984 prediction.

The best of these little “journalists” are leeches and adoring cowards. They cling to the higher-ups who run the show. The worst of them are psychologically and spiritually mongrelized sociopaths, for whom sadism is the only way of life. Like their CIA brothers, they believe (or did believe until recently) that no one could remove their entitlements.

Steve Bannon knows—and I’m sure he’s told Trump—that a war against the media is the best way to go right now. On many fronts, the media are the funnels for presenting inside out lies, from the CIA, to the American people.

In other words, if the head of the snake is too hard to cut off at the moment, go for other parts of the body.

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.

Late on Friday, with the US population embracing the upcoming holidays and oblivious of most news emerging from the administration, Obama quietly signed into law the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) which authorizes $611 billion for the military in 2017.

Today, I have signed into law S. 2943, the “National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017.” This Act authorizes fiscal year 2017 appropriations principally for the Department of Defense and for Department of Energy national security programs, provides vital benefits for military personnel and their families, and includes authorities to facilitate ongoing operations around the globe. It continues many critical authorizations necessary to ensure that we are able to sustain our momentum in countering the threat posed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and to reassure our European allies, as well as many new authorizations that, among other things, provide the Departments of Defense and Energy more flexibility in countering cyber-attacks and our adversaries’ use of unmanned aerial vehicles.”

Much of the balance of Obama’s statement blamed the GOP for Guantanamo’s continued operation and warned that “unless the Congress changes course, it will be judged harshly by history,” Obama said. Obama also said Congress failed to use the bill to reduce wasteful overhead (like perhaps massive F-35 cost overruns?) or modernize military health care, which he said would exacerbate budget pressures facing the military in the years ahead.

But while the passage of the NDAA – and the funding of the US military – was hardly a surprise, the biggest news is what was buried deep inside the provisions of the Defense Authortization Act.

Recall that as we reported in early June, “a bill to implement the U.S.’ very own de facto Ministry of Truth had been quietly introduced in Congress. As with any legislation attempting to dodge the public spotlight the Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act of 2016 marks a further curtailment of press freedom and another avenue to stultify avenues of accurate information. Introduced by Congressmen Adam Kinzinger and Ted Lieu, H.R. 5181 seeks a “whole-government approach without the bureaucratic restrictions” to counter “foreign disinformation and manipulation,” which they believe threaten the world’s “security and stability.”

Also called the Countering Information Warfare Act of 2016 (S. 2692), when introduced in March by Sen. Rob Portman, the legislation represents a dramatic return to Cold War-era government propaganda battles. “These countries spend vast sums of money on advanced broadcast and digital media capabilities, targeted campaigns, funding of foreign political movements, and other efforts to influence key audiences and populations,” Portman explained, adding that while the U.S. spends a relatively small amount on its Voice of America, the Kremlin provides enormous funding for its news organization, RT.

“Surprisingly,” Portman continued, “there is currently no single U.S. governmental agency or department charged with the national level development, integration and synchronization of whole-of-government strategies to counter foreign propaganda and disinformation.”

Long before the “fake news” meme became a daily topic of extensive conversation on such discredited mainstream portals as CNN and WaPo, H.R. 5181 would task the Secretary of State with coordinating the Secretary of Defense, the Director of National Intelligence, and the Broadcasting Board of Governors to “establish a Center for Information Analysis and Response,” which will pinpoint sources of disinformation, analyze data, and — in true dystopic manner — ‘develop and disseminate’ “fact-based narratives” to counter effrontery propaganda.

In short, long before “fake news” became a major media topic, the US government was already planning its legally-backed crackdown on anything it would eventually label “fake news.”

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Fast forward to December 8, when the “Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act” passed in the Senate, quietly inserted inside the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) Conference Report.

And now, following Friday’s Obama signing of the NDAA on Friday evening, the Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act is now law.

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Here is the full statement issued by the generously funded Senator Rob Portman (R- Ohio) on the singing into law of a bill that further chips away at press liberties in the US, and which sets the stage for future which hunts and website shutdowns, purely as a result of an accusation that any one media outlet or site is considered as a source of “disinformation and propaganda” and is shut down by the government.

U.S. Senators Rob Portman (R-OH) and Chris Murphy (D-CT) today announced that their Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act – legislation designed to help American allies counter foreign government propaganda from Russia, China, and other nations – has been signed into law as part of the FY 2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) Conference Report. The bipartisan bill, which was introduced by Senators Portman and Murphy in March, will improve the ability of the United States to counter foreign propaganda and disinformation from our enemies by establishing an interagency center housed at the State Department to coordinate and synchronize counter-propaganda efforts throughout the U.S. government. To support these efforts, the bill also creates a grant program for NGOs, think tanks, civil society and other experts outside government who are engaged in counter-propaganda related work. This will better leverage existing expertise and empower our allies overseas to defend themselves from foreign manipulation. It will also help foster a free and vibrant press and civil society overseas, which is critical to ensuring our allies have access to truthful information and inoculating people against foreign propaganda campaigns.

“Our enemies are using foreign propaganda and disinformation against us and our allies, and so far the U.S. government has been asleep at the wheel,” Portman said. “But today, the United States has taken a critical step towards confronting the extensive, and destabilizing, foreign propaganda and disinformation operations being waged against us by our enemies overseas. With this bill now law, we are finally signaling that enough is enough; the United States will no longer sit on the sidelines. We are going to confront this threat head-on. I am confident that, with the help of this bipartisan bill, the disinformation and propaganda used against us, our allies, and our interests will fail.”

“The use of propaganda to undermine democracy has hit a new low. But now we are finally in a position to confront this threat head on and get out the truth. By building up independent, objective journalism in places like eastern Europe, we can start to fight back by exposing these fake narratives and empowering local communities to protect themselves,” said Murphy. “I’m proud that our bill was signed into law, and I look forward to working with Senator Portman to make sure these tools and new resources are effectively used to get out the truth.”

NOTE: The bipartisan Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act is organized around two main priorities to help achieve the goal of combatting the constantly evolving threat of foreign disinformation from our enemies:

The first priority is developing a whole-of-government strategy for countering THE foreign propaganda and disinformation being wages against us and our allies by our enemies. The bill would increase the authority, resources, and mandate of the Global Engagement Center to include state actors like Russia and China as well as non-state actors. The Center will be led by the State Department, but with the active senior level participation of the Department of Defense, USAID, the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the Intelligence Community, and other relevant agencies. The Center will develop, integrate, and synchronize whole-of-government initiatives to expose and counter foreign disinformation operations by our enemies and proactively advance fact-based narratives that support U.S. allies and interests.

Second, the legislation seeks to leverage expertise from outside government to create more adaptive and responsive U.S. strategy options. The legislation establishes a fund to help train local journalists and provide grants and contracts to NGOs, civil society organizations, think tanks, private sector companies, media organizations, and other experts outside the U.S. government with experience in identifying and analyzing the latest trends in foreign government disinformation techniques. This fund will complement and support the Center’s role by integrating capabilities and expertise available outside the U.S. government into the strategy-making process. It will also empower a decentralized network of private sector experts and integrate their expertise into the strategy-making process.

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And so, with the likes of WaPo having already primed the general public to equate “Russian Propaganda” with “fake news” (despite admitting after the fact their own report was essentially “fake“), while the US media has indoctrinated the public to assume that any information which is not in compliance with the official government narrative, or dares to criticize the establishment, is also “fake news” and thus falls under the “Russian propaganda” umbrella, the scene is now set for the US government to legally crack down on every media outlet that the government deems to be “foreign propaganda.”

“In the middle of all the brain-research going on, from one end of the planet to the other, there is the assumption that the individual doesn’t really exist. He’s a fiction. There is only the motion of particles in the brain. Therefore, nothing is inviolate, nothing is protected. Make the brain do A, make it do B; it doesn’t matter. What matters is harmonizing these tiny particles, in order to build a collective consensus, in order to force a science of behavior.” (The Underground, Jon Rappoport)

Individual power. Your power.

It stands as the essence of what the founding documents of the American Republic are all about, once you scratch below the surface a millimeter or so.

Therefore, it stands to reason that colleges and universities would be teaching courses in INDIVIDUAL POWER.

As soon as I write that, though, we all fall down laughing, because we understand the absurdity of such a proposition. Can you imagine Harvard endowing a chair in Individual Power?

Students would tear down the building in which such courses were taught. They’ve been carefully instructed that the individual is the greatest living threat to the planet.

If you can’t see that as mind control, visit your local optometrist and get a prescription for glasses.

So we have this astonishing situation: the very basis of freedom has no reflection in the educational system.

You can say “individual” within certain limited contexts. You can say “power,” if you’re talking about nuclear plants, or if you’re accusing someone of a crime, but if you put “individual” and “power” together and attribute a positive quality to the combination, you’re way, way outside the consensus. You’re crazy. You’re committing some kind of treason.

In order to spot the deepest versions of educational brainwashing, YOU HAVE TO HAVE SOME STANDARD AGAINST WHICH YOU CAN COMPARE WHAT IS COMING DOWN THE PIPELINE INTO THE MINDS OF STUDENTS.

If you lack that standard, you miss most of the action.

If you lack that standard, you have already been worked over by the system.

Then you’ll see some Grade-A prime mind control. Everywhere. Because schools either don’t mention it, or they discredit it.

Back in the days when I was writing on assignment for newspapers and magazines, I pitched a story about individual power to an editor. I wanted to trace its history as an idea over the past ten years.

He looked at me for a few seconds. He looked at me as if I’d just dropped some cow flop on his desk. He knew I wasn’t kidding and I had something I could write and turn in to him, but that made it worse. He began to squirm in his chair.

He laughed nervously.

Then he stopped laughing.

He said, “This isn’t what we do.”

For him, I was suddenly radioactive.

I had a similar experience with a high-school history teacher in California. We were having lunch in a cafe in Santa Monica, and I said, “You should teach a course in individual power. The positive aspects. No group stuff. Just the individual.”

He frowned a deep intellectual frown, as if I’d just opened my jacket and exposed a few sticks of dynamite strapped to my chest. As if he was thinking about which agency of the government to report me to.

Now, for the schizoid part. The movies. Television. Video games. Comics. Graphic novels. They are filled to the brim, they are overflowing with individual heroes who have considerable power. These entertainment businesses bank billions of dollars, because people want to immerse themselves in that universe where the individual is supreme. They want it badly.

But when it comes to “real” life, power stops at the front door and no one answers the bell.

Suddenly, the hero, the person with power is anathema. He’s left holding the bag. So he adjusts. He waits. He wonders. He settles for less, far less. He stifles his hopes. He shrinks. He forgets. He develops “problems” and tries to solve them within an impossibly narrow context. He redefines success and victory down to meet limited expectations. He strives for the normal and the average. For his efforts, he receives tidbits, like a dog looking up at his master.

If that isn’t mind control, nothing is.

Once we enter a world where the individual no longer has credibility, a world where “greatest good for the greatest number” is the overriding principle, and where that principle is defined by the elite few, the term “mind control” will have a positive connotation. It will be accepted as the obvious strategy for achieving “peace in our time.”

At a job interview, a candidate will say, “Yes, I received my PhD in Mind Control at Yale, and then I did three years of post-doc work in Cooperative Learning Studies at MIT. My PhD thesis? It was titled, ‘Coordination Strategies in the Classroom for Eliminating the Concept of the Individual.’”

From Wikipedia, “Cooperative Learning”: “Students must work in groups to complete tasks collectively toward academic goals. Unlike individual learning, which can be competitive in nature, students learning cooperatively can capitalize on one another’s resources and skills…Furthermore, the teacher’s role changes from giving information to facilitating students’ learning. Everyone succeeds when the group succeeds.”

That is a towering assemblage of bullshit.

“Everyone succeeds when the group succeeds.” You could use that quote on the back cover of Orwell’s 1984 or Huxley’s Brave New World. Everyone does not succeed—because the individual never finds out what he can do on his own. That avenue is cut off. He only knows what he can achieve in combination with others. He only knows what he can understand when he borrows from others. He may never glimpse what he truly wants to do in life.

This is a tragic situation, but the tragedy is concealed, because the memory of shifting from individual independence to group dependence is gone. There is no such memory. A child is brought up without independence. Therefore, how can he recall losing it?

He only knows the group and the team and the participation and the praise. He only knows the organizing of his life within a synthetically produced context.

He is taught that this is good and necessary.

So, one day, when a bolt comes out of the blue and he recognizes he is himself, what will he use to grasp that revelation and build on it?

Yes, there are productive groups and teams, and one is always working with others, to some degree. But the core and the starting point is one’s self. That is where the insight and the magic begin. That is where the great decisions and commitments are made. That is where the world is born, every day.

I see no end of writing about this magic, because civilization has been turned upside down by treacherous people who have been fabricating a counter-tradition that will sink the ship.

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free emails at NoMoreFakeNews.com or OutsideTheRealityMachine.

Rule by technocracy—that is the subject of this article. In such a future, there would be no politicians. They would have been made extinct…

Huxley’s 1932 novel about a World State and its version of Utopia is still one of the most important and relevant novels of our time.

It is the companion piece to Orwell’s 1984. The overt brutal force has been removed from the equation in Brave New World. Instead: all births are synthetic, hatched in artificial womb factories, with accompanying genetic manipulation; no more nuclear families; no more monogamy; education is achieved through hypnotic sleep-learning; a caste system is engineered so the lower, less intelligent classes are happy with their lot, and the upper-level “alphas” occupy the top positions; the castes have little interest in associating with each other.

Technocracy has triumphed.

The theme of life, the basic theme, is Pleasure. Pleasures of the senses. Not of the mind, not of constructive action, certainly not of imagination. Pleasure keeps the citizens of the World State occupied…and if that fails, the ultimate backup is a drug called Soma, which relieves anxiety and depression and stimulates “happiness.”

There are many people living among us today who would opt for that life in a heartbeat. They would see no downside. “Well, of course. Sign me up. I’ve been trying to find that pleasure all along. I’ll take it.”

The 1932 technocrats of Brave New World found a key. Why should they waste time trying to inflict pain on the population as a control mechanism? Why should they risk rebellion and revolution? Go “positive.” Give people pleasure. Absolutely.

All older forms of government fade away. They were just crude experiments in the foothills of the one and only revolution: technology deployed to pacify the world.

By the way, in Brave New World, no one reads books. They’re unnecessary. They make no sense. The “better life” is already a living fact. What possible benefit could a book deliver?

Every time I read Brave New World I see complacent animals grazing in pastures. That’s the picture. Human animals at peace in the fields. Nothing to care about. Nothing to think about. Just bend and chew. Don’t worry, be happy.

As Patrick Wood mentions in his fine and highly recommended book, Technocracy Rising, Huxley began writing Brave New World as a parody of other utopian novels of his time, but he became fascinated with his own ideas along the way, and set his mind to the task of fleshing out a technological end-game civilization.

Brave New World reveals a landscape in which people would be unable to turn around and throw off what has been done to them. They would not consider it. They would have no basis for comparison. They would have no cultural memory. They are living in a universal super-welfare state. Their needs are satisfied—especially the central need: pleasure. It isn’t gained or worked for. It’s given. It’s a fact as basic as rain and sun. It’s there. It’s the shortest distance between the present moment and the next moment.

Isn’t this the fairy tale told about rich and famous celebrities? They can wake up in the morning thinking about what pleasure is immediately there for the taking. They have the means. They have the time. They have the opportunity. In Brave New World, everyone is that kind of creature. By necessity. There is no real choice. Their most base desires are their only desires. Their horizon is shortened.